September 2012

Today all over the UK and here in West Norfolk's kettles were boiling 'ten to the dozen' as thousands of people and businesses opened their doors to the public to take part in the World's Biggest Coffee Morning for Macmillan.

Adam Newstead, Ryan Smee and I visited a few in King's Lynn Town Centre. Big thanks to everyone at Abbots Estate Agents who'd made some amazing cakes which we of course we sampled with a brew.

In December 2011 I took a trip to Denver Mills Farmers Market to catch up Alix Pollizi (Hotel Inspector). She was following the family who run the mills and watching over the activities that take place every day. The family were the focus of a BBC2 programme which featured KLFM earlier this year.

Today the BBC 2 TV cameras came back to KL.FM as part of a follow up programme which will be shown on the tele in 2013 to promote their next venture to secure the windmill.

You can hear the interview below or wait until the New Year and watch it on BBC 2.

'2nd Wind'

If you would like to learn more visit Denver Windmill tomorrow (Thursday 27th September) between 12 and 2pm.

Every year for the past 4 years I’ve visited the Princess Theatre in Hunstanton to judge their ‘Search for a Star’ and this year I was lucky enough on Saturday to be invited to perform duties at the final.

Nine acts mostly from West Norfolk took to the stage to sing, dance, play guitar, piano, tell jokes and much more. The talent on show was honestly the best I’ve seen in a long while and all of the contestants should be very proud of themselves, especial the lady who was a unanimous winner with all the judges.

Congratulations to Eva Mason, 10, who owned the stage the moment she walked on, telling jokes with the confidence of someone four times her age, the presence of a pro, the voice of an angel and she played the piano. Not only did she work the crowd she owned their hearts too and you can hear how she felt straight after her win in my interview below.

Eva won a cool £500! At 10 years old I think she will have a lot of fun with that.

Back in 2004 I was invited to join the Circus. When I arrived I was hauled off and strapped into the terrifyingly named ‘Wheel of Death’ and told not to let go; I then travelled up as high as the big top before falling through the air, spinning a full 360 degrees and reaching speeds of 30mph!

Luckily for me, my visit to “Mr Fips Wonder Circus” with Adam Newstead yesterday wasn’t quite as fast paced but it was just as dangerous!

We were asked by Mr Fip himself to help out his clowns with a spot of decorating; both Adam and myself thought we needed to learn a thing or two about painting and decorating so we accepted Mr Fips invitation.

I knew that we would both get covered in all manner of gunk but didn’t realise just how wet and messy we’d be by the end of our circus experience, you can see just how messy we got and just how much fun we had in the video.

Afterwards Mr Fips very kindly allowed us to use his shower, his very low pressured and very cold shower, to get clean. The only downside for me was forgetting some essential clothing for under my clean pair of jeans! Adam however forgot his towel!

“Mr Fips Wonder Circus” is at Knights Hill from the 19th of September to the 23rd September, with afternoon and evening performances join the clowns, the jugglers, acrobats, trapeze artists, and contortionists, the amazing Spiderman even makes an appearance!

Their first performance was yesterday at 5pm and they are in King’s Lynn till Sunday the 23rd September

TOTAL RAISED SO FAR: £2,228.00

TARGET £3000

Today I donned my hard hart and florescent jacket and joined the boys from Carter Builders over at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn to turn the first bit of soil ahead of the extension to Macmillan Centre being built. When complete this extension will make such a difference to the patients visiting for cancer treatment, at the moment the space provided for chemotherapy isn’t the largest and it’s only right that those who need to be there should have more comfort in their time of treatment.

You may wonder why they asked me to get the building work under way? Back at the start of this year listeners to my show very kindly pledged over £2000 to help the hospital acquire two new chemotherapy chairs and replace one other. Since then money has continued to trickle in and as of today I’d like to re-ignite to campaign to help them get even more money to buy some even better chairs for the patients battling cancer.

Why should you give them your hard earned money?

Around 1500 new cancer patients are treated at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn every year. Many of these patients have chemotherapy treatment which is carried out in their specialist unit. The Chemotherapy Room currently has eight special ‘chemo’ chairs, from where 25 patients are treated every day. Cancer treatment services in King’s Lynn are recognised nationally as giving patients a ‘Gold Standard’ level for treatment.

Thursday's Home-Time came live from the Houses of Parliament and outside Radio 1.

I visited the corridors of power to experience the Norfolk Food & Drink Festival as a guest of Liz Truss MP where the most amazing food, all produced in Norfolk, was on display.

Beer from Beeston, tomatoes from Stoke Ferry, potatoes from Swaffham, chocolate from Fakenham, bread from Dereham, apple juice from Sandringham and so much more.

Also whilst in town I decided to launch my campaign to 'Try something Newstead'. As you may know Chris Moyles has left Radio 1 and a whole load of new listeners will be up for grabs. To help make sure Adam Newstead gets as many of these as possible I took my case to their studios to recruit fans waiting outside. I told them what they have been missing and also asked them to make the pledge to "Try something Newstead"

Listen to hear me convert one miss guided Radio 1 listener.

ABOVE: A selection of people pledging "To try Something Newstead" at the Food Festival and (bottom right) me outside Radio 1 shouting about the Adam Newstead Breakfast Show

On Thursday Myleene Klass is helping Littlewoods celebrate their 80th Birthday by releasing 80 balloons, each with £80 inside. This means money will quite literally be falling from the sky all over the UK.

I caught up with the Norfolk girl done good to find out more and talk sweeties!

Have a listen below....

Myleene is a regular on my show, here's a picture of us both looking much much younger, well me at least, she still looks great. (Not that I ever did!)

Inspired a little by the amazing performances from Team GB over the summer and the need to make sure my children are safe on their bikes my wife and I decided to buy two adult bikes on Saturday morning, something we had been threatening to do for at least 2 years. I had £50 in my pocket from the previous Saturday (see my earlier post) and I knew that would be a good amount to contribute to a second hand bike or two from that little place on the left as you head to Gayton from Knights Hill. After successfully bartering a bit of discount I then had to get the bikes home and in a car with 3 other people that was not easy, so after some ‘tooing and throwing’ the bikes finally made it home.

As the weather was so glorious we packed up a picnic and went on our first family bike ride and decided to use the cycle path to Springwood. Despite one little crash from my son, a few tears and one or two stops it was a success, so successful that we did it all over again on Sunday and I even biked to work today, without stopping, crashing or crying!. On the journey to work however I didn't get time to stop at the pub.

I’m not sure if I'll make it home tonight but the wife has already suggested that she'll be on standby to rescue me AA style after the show if needs be.

Today was another one of those days for me which prove that every day of working for KL.FM brings something different. On my arrival at the studios I was greeted my Mark Fowler from ‘Eastenders’ and had to withstand the urge to greet as him such, “Morning Todd”. Otherwise known as ‘Tucker’ or that guy who skated of the screen in Dancing on Ice’ amongst others, this year he will be playing’ Abanazaar’ in the King’s Lynn Corn Exchange Panto. He was at KL.FM to record the commercial to promote this year’s performance before heading over the Corn Exchange itself for the ‘Press Launch’ of the show in front of local VIP’s which for some reason was to include me! In full costume the cast performed extracts of this year’s show.

It’s produced by Jordan Productions who in previous years have bought John Altman and Letitia Dean to town. Speaking about the Panto Todd said “I love pantomimes because they are all good fun and it’s the one time of the year you can throw on a frock and people won’t think anything of it”. You can see his outfit for yourself between December 7th and December 31st.

I also found proof that Paul Tibbs from the Lynn News is NOT the same person as Ian Burt from EDP. I bump into these guys quite alot over the year but never at the same time and often get them confused, the picture above shows their likeness!

Immediately after the press preview I ran as fast as I could, which is not very fast, to the British Heart Foundation opposite Sainsbury’s in the Vancouver Quarter to broadcast part of my show with Supertrooper Bear live from their ‘Bagathon’. This point of this was to encourage others to fill their BHF Charity Bags to help them raise as much cash as possible.

Each full bag is worth £20 towards their life-saving work, so please take 5 minutes in your lunch break during September to help them, help others.

What an amazing weekend! On arrival at Twickenham Rugby Ground I was told “Football is Gentlemen’s game played by thugs” & “Rugby is thug’s game played by Gentlemen” and after two full 80 minute games I could understand why. I’ve never taken to Rugby, if ever the sport is on my TV I always reach for the remote control as quick as possible, but now it feels like I have missed something over the last 38 years, what an amazing game!

After a quick lesson in the rules, a read of the programme, some drink and food we took our seats in prime position for the most thrilling game of sport I’ve witnessed in a long time. To add a bit of spice we had a mini sweepstake amongst my group which included Adam Newstead who knew even less than I about the game.

The second game wasn’t anything to write home about but the game between London Wasps and Harlequins was nail biting. Despite being way in front the whole game the Wasps lost 40-42 to Harlequins in the very last minute of the game, I also predicted the time of the last ‘Try’ in this match which went a long way to helping me make the final of ‘Sweepstake’. Not only did we have to predict the time of the last ‘Try’ but we also had to predict the winners of both games. There were 4 left standing after the final whistle so the only way to decide was by playing Rock, papers, scissors...